Business Intelligence (BI) system facilitates informed and timely decision making incompetitive business environment. However, decision making can turn out to be highlychallenging if information delivered by BI system does not meet certain level of quality.Organization can benefit from provided information if they are correct, comprehensive,current, and accessible. The organizational members who use BI application to make decisionare best informants to verify the quality of delivered information. Additionally,the implementers of BI system are the one who must be aware of delivering high qualityof information and can explain the reason of failures if any. It is critical to inquire bothimplementers and users. Therefore, the factors that can affect the quality of informationwere studied through comprehensive literature review. Low quality of information maymake customers/ suppliers’ relationship worse, shrink the efficiency of the business performance,decrease the level of trust on BI, and eventually cause to lose the competitivenessin market place. This thesis is intended at investigating fundamental dimensionsthat hinder effective utilization of information in BI system and realizing how these dimensionscan affect the quality and outcome of decisions. Study with an exploratorypurpose was designed and conducted at a chain retail stores in Iran to gather empiricaldata from both group of BI users and implementers through focus group interview. Theresult of investigation shows the main BI system utilized to facilitate customer/ supplierrelationship management and store operation management. Business areas and activitiesinfluenced by the quality of information include, inventory management, customer loyalty,competitiveness, and supplier management. The information quality issues are encounteredmainly due to technical failures, lack of competent system developers, changesin business environment, inappropriate documentation during the system developmentlifecycle, and logical error in programming and designing algorithms. The time, effort,and resources spent on exploring and resolving problems regarding to the quality of informationhad a great influence on efficiency and effectiveness. Documentation duringsystem development life cycle is emphasized as a crucial factor that necessitates furtherstudy in documentation subject. The preliminary findings signify the importance of study to consider information quality in BI practice.

By applying the methods of Critical Discourse Analysis this paper aims to explore how ideology works within the discursive construction of class, in the representation of the supporters and opponents of the government of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. News items from New York Times (US), El País (Uruguay) and Dagens Nyheter (Sweden) constitute the analyzed material. The paper argues that class-markers are important in the representation of government supporters, whom many times are constructed as belonging to the poorer sectors of society. Class is however less explicit in the representation of Chávez-opposition, which in fact is lead by elite groups. It is therefore argued that class in this context becomes a marker of deviance, which in turn works ideologically in legitimizing oppositional groups and disqualifying the support for Chávez’ government.

Despite scholarly consensus about the importance of the media for democracy, scant attention has been paid to what democracy means to journalistic discourse and how discourses on democracy are interrelated with legitimacy. The aim of this paper is to explore how (il)legitimate democracy is constructed in newspaper discourse. By using critical discourse analysis (CDA), this paper examines foreign news items about Venezuela, a country that under the presidency of Hugo Chávez has challenged the dominant global political and economic orders. The analysis section focuses on two discourses about the Venezuelan government: the constructions of populism and power concentration, which serve to mark deviance from what is perceived as a legitimate democracy. This paper argues that a liberal perception of democracy constitutes a central framework for the construction of (il)legitimate democracy, which is revealed not least by news discourse’s focus on what is morally unacceptable political conduct according to liberal democratic norms. In this respect, the media discourse serves to denounce potential abuses of governmental power but fail to recognize democracy in the context of a social struggle against the effects of neoliberalism and capitalism. In this case, the news media is hegemonic in the Gramscian sense, because it provides a framework of democracy that remains within the dominant economic and political structures.

This study examines the media discourse on the 2002 coup d’état against the government of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, with the aim of exploring how ideology in media discourse helps construct democracy in a Latin American political context. Critical discourse analysis is used to examine written pieces from Dagens Nyheter (Sweden), El País (Uruguay), and the New York Times (US). The study finds that the discourse on the overthrow and the events preceding it constructs the coup as a potential victory for democracy and as the definitive end of Chávez. However, after the failure of the coup and the reinstallation of Chávez one can perceive discursive renegotiations, such as the publishing of non-fundamental criticism of the overthrow. The study argues that the media discourse on the coup displays a highly relativistic attitude towards democracy, which serves the interests of the elite classes in Venezuela and of US hegemony in global politics. The article also argues that the flexibility of the discourse at hand shows the need for a detailed analysis of how ideology is (re)formed in media discourse.

This paper discusses news journalism about inequality from a critical point of view, with the aim of contributing to the critical theorization of the relationship between journalism and sustainability. Sustainability and journalism on social inequality are perceived as intersecting in at least two ways. On one level, journalism can serve sustainable development by providing high-quality content that can help citizens to better understand the causes behind social inequality and how it can be overcome. On another level, journalism would itself gain much from sustainable development on a global level, since that would provide a good ground for a high-quality journalism characterized by its professional and democratic ethics rather than one that is strained by market-logics. The paper focuses on reification and problematizes the ways in which social inequality is reified in news journalism. Basing the argumentation on examples from international journalism, it is argued that although the existence of social inequality in a specific country can be acknowledged in the reporting – for example by the reference to rich and poor people and rich and poor geographic spaces – the social, political and historical causes of this inequality remain abstracted. In this sense, reification provides a rather objectivist account on inequality, which in turn limits the critique of the mechanisms that lie behind it. On the long run such constructions serve the legitimation of social inequality, which indeed ought to be seen as a sustainability problem. The paper also argues that for a more sustainable journalism to take place, a shift in the attitude towards social inequality and sustainable development must take place in the broader sociocultural context that surrounds journalism.

This study analyzes the journalistic construction of the ongoing international renegotiation of cannabis, with the aim of contributing to the theorization of how journalism mediates between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic positions at times of crisis of hegemonic values. The study perceives the many ongoing attempts of legalizing and decriminalizing cannabis for recreational use as providing a disequilibrium to the hegemonic view of the substance as a dangerous narcotic that is rightly banned, and as intensifying a hegemonic struggle over the meaning of cannabis. Swedish print news journalism about cannabis legalization in different countries and contexts is studied, using critical discourse analysis. The analysis shows that journalism allows for debate between positive and skeptic discourses about the effects of recreational cannabis consumption and its medical benefits, and that voices that argue for cannabis legalization to combat organized crime are given important framing power. This means that a measure of legitimacy is given to discourses that counter the prohibitionist hegemony in Sweden, which means that mainstream journalism in this specific case serves as an arena for challenging hegemonic values that are in crisis.

Despite that the notion of democracy has a central place in the Western self-image, and also in media studies, research that focuses on how democracy is ideologically loaded in journalistic content is still in its infancy. In recent times, democracy has been used with great enthusiasm by Western political leaders, while the meaning of democracy perhaps is more fuzzy than ever. In times of economic and political crisis, and of a weak Left in most European countries, it is important to examine how journalism constructs notions of democracy, and how such notions reflect specific political positions and interests. This study, which is theoretically rooted in ideology critique, and methodologically inspired by critical discourse analysis, examines how news journalism in the coverage of Venezuela and the Ukraine conflict constructs notions of democracy. The study is specially interested in exploring and discussing the ideological interconnections between imperialism and geopolitical interests, and the journalistic construction of democracy.

This study aims to explore the construction of difference in foreign news discourse on culturally similar but politically different non-Western subjects. Applying critical discourse analysis (CDA) together with a critique of Eurocentrism, the study examines difference in newspaper constructions of government supporters and oppositional groups in Venezuela. Discursive differences are evident in the strategies used for constructing the two groups with regard to political rationality and violence. Government supporters are associated with social justice, Venezuela’s poor, dogmatic behavior, and the use of political violence. The opposition, in contrast, is constructed as following a Western democratic rationale that stresses anti-authoritarianism. This group is primarily associated with victims of violence. While the opposition is conveyed as being compatible with Eurocentric values and practices, government supporters to great extent deviate from these norms. Such constructions serve to legitimize politico-ideological undercurrents of Eurocentrism, as the defense of liberalism.

We are witnessing the renegotiation of cannabis substances in many parts of the world. After being classified as narcotics and subjected to a worldwide ban for several decades, cannabis has now been legalized in Uruguay and in several US states, and decriminalized in some other countries. This paper aims to study how the ongoing renegotiation of cannabis, which involves the legalization of the substance in different parts of the world, is constructed in Swedish print news journalism. This is done with the purpose of understanding how news journalism in a context of a traditionally strong drug prohibition (de)legitimizes different positions and perspectives in the ongoing renegotiation of cannabis, and to what extent journalism in such a context offers challenges to the reigning prohibitionist hegemony. Although cannabis and the media has been researched extensively, very few studies have been conducted by media and communication or journalism scholars, and contributions have been placed mainly in areas as for example drug policy, drug use and misuse, and public health. The current study, in contrast, wishes to contribute to the critical study of drug journalism. The paper draws on critical theory, understanding the ongoing renegotiation of cannabis as bringing disequilibrium to the hegemonic view of cannabis as dangerous drug that needs to be banned. Journalism is perceived as playing a key role in this context, since journalism is an arena where different discourses on cannabis struggle for prominence. Journalism can in this sense serve the strengthening of counter-hegemonic discourses on cannabis or the reinforcement of the prohibitionist hegemony. The study uses critical discourse analysis as a method to study 49 print newspaper items. The results show that the studied media invites opposed discourses regarding the health risks and the medical benefits of cannabis to be part of the news pages, which creates a somewhat pluralistic view on cannabis. The study also finds that the construction of cannabis legalization as a means to combat organized crime is given significant framing power. These results suggest that the ongoing renegotiation of cannabis in different parts of the world invites Swedish journalism to broaden the debate on the substance and to provide certain legitimacy to positive discourses on cannabis that are otherwise considered deviant in the Swedish drug debate. This serves as an example of how changes in distant political contexts affect the ways in which journalism ascribes legitimacy to specific discourses on drugs.

Following in the celebrity trajectory of mommy bloggers, global micro-microcelebrities, and reality TV families, family Influencers on social media are one genre of microcelebrity for whom the “anchor” content in which they demonstrate their creative talents, such as producing musical covers or comedy sketches, is a highly profitable endeavor. Yet, this commerce is sustained by an undercurrent of “filler” content wherein everyday routines of domestic life are shared with followers as a form of “calibrated amateurism.” Calibrated amateurism is a practice and aesthetic in which actors in an attention economy labor specifically over crafting contrived authenticity that portrays the raw aesthetic of an amateur, whether or not they really are amateurs by status or practice, by relying on the performance ecology of appropriate platforms, affordances, tools, cultural vernacular, and social capital. In this article, I consider the anatomy of calibrated amateurism, and how this practice relates to follower engagement and responses. While some follower responses have highlighted concerns over the children’s well-being, a vast majority overtly signal their love, support, and even envy toward such parenting. I draw on ethnographically informed content analysis of two group of family Influencers on social media to illustrate the enactment and value of calibrated amateurism in an increasingly saturated ecology and, investigate how such parents justify the digital labor in which their children partake to produce viable narratives of domestic life.

Taking Singaporean Member of Parliament (MP) Baey Yam Keng as a case study, this chapter analyses how charismatic engagement can be mediated through social media and selfie tropes. In the wake of online campaigns since the General Elections 2011, and with the ruling party garnering its lowest share of electoral votes since state independence, MP Baey, aged 47, has emerged as a press-branded 'selfie king', 'social media celebrity' and 'Twitter influencer' for engaging with the online citizenry since publishing his first selfie in March 2013. Drawing on his Instagram and Twitter feed and selfie-related engagements up till 2015, this chapter demonstrates how politician selfies can be exercised to solicit affect and mobilise public sentiment among voters.

Ordinary digital media users who gained large public followings, also known as Influencers, emerged as micro-celebrities in the early 2000s, with many working for a living directly through online content creation and the self-representation of their everyday lives. Capitalising on high visibility, many Influencers also engage in social justice activities. As a result, they have become important nodes in LGBTQ networks online, including through personal and organisational collaborations. In this chapter, we draw on digital ethnography to analyse a gay-identifying Australian YouTube Influencer, Troye Sivan, focussing on how his status as an Influencer creating digital content has fostered queer support by way of a creative work orientation that simultaneously promotes both a rights-based activism and his own career.

The making of the entrepreneurial self is a dominant trope of contemporary media culture, and a multitude of media formats across divergent national contexts showcase the contemporary obsession with media visibility and the attainment of celebrity status as the most aspirational form of social mobility. In Singapore, commercial lifestyle blogs are prime examples of entrepreneurial identity-making as websites almost exclusively created by young women, showcasing user-generated content oriented around the pleasures of consumption as a means of empowerment, self-actualisation and individualisation. By analysing content on a selection of blogs, this article aims to answer the following questions: To what extent are Singaporean women’s identities contingent upon material consumption as a means of identity creation? How do blogs created by women demonstrate an entrepreneurial investment in their appearance and feminine corporeality as the means of perceived empowerment, even at the expense of more formal and structured forms of individualisation, such as education?

On Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and weblogs, consumer activity is increasingly institutionalized, guarded by rules and norms. Consumers take on tasks previously performed by trained media workers, but they also create new activities, emerging as a new breed of media workers, institutionalizing new fields of the media and advertising industries and their associated practices (Dolbec and Fischer 2015). It has been described how amateur workers develop new ethical norms and rules for publishing, by taking journalistic/editorial decisions on what content to publish and how, within their new institutional domain (Abidin & Ots, 2015).

This paper is focused on a specific group of stakeholders – everyday Internet users who manufacture themselves into a new form of social media microcelebrity known as the ‘Influencer’ (Abidin 2015). Since 2005, many young women have taken to social media to craft ‘microcelebrity personas’ as a career – “a new style of online performance that involves people ‘amping up’ their popularity over the Web using technologies like video, blogs and social networking sites” (Senft 2008: 25). In their most basic capacity, Influencers produce advertorials on blogs and social media platforms in exchange for payment or sponsored products and services (Abidin 2015). Owing to their power to shape purchase decisions, their clients have progressed from small home businesses to bluechip companies including Canon, Gucci, and KLM. Until recently, the most effective advertorials are those that are seamlessly woven into the daily narratives Influencers publish on their blogs and social media, such that readers are unable to tell apart ‘paid opinions’ from ‘unpaid’ sentiments (Abidin 2014). However, along with the maturity of the field, there is a gradual standardization of new advertising formats.

The conducted study explores how semi-professional microcelebrity Influencers create advertising market innovations. Researchers have previously described how consumer fans help firms innovate (e.g. Füller et al 2008), and how fan cultures celebrate their favourite brands by creating their own advertisements (Muniz & Schau 2005; for overview see Ots & Hartmann 2015). This paper takes a slightly different approach – rather than seeing consumers as co-creators, it demonstrates how new actors outside the traditional media and advertising industries, make innovations that compete with the incumbents. We focus on these vernacular advertising innovations in the age of social media, and seek to understand how Influencers orientate towards a youth market in the saturated, visually dominated attention economy of Instagram. The findings include a typology of innovative advertising formats emerging outside the traditional media companies, along with their associated publishing rules as defined by the semi-professional Influencers.

The data draws on a larger study of social media Influencers in Singapore since mid-2010, including over a year of intensive participant observation conducted with these Influencers in the flesh in the capacity of various roles. These interactions and observations were archived in extensively detailed field diaries. 120 personal interviews were conducted with Influencers, Influencer management agencies, (prospective) clients, readers, and friends and family of Influencers between December 2011 and July 2013. Social media content from blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, AskFM, and popular public forums was archived until December 2015. Fieldwork entailed continued interaction with other actors involved in the Influencers’ social milieu, including their peers, backend production management, sponsors and advertisers, and readers. As such, although the data is drawn mainly from the textual and visual content of publically accessed blogs and associated social media platforms including Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, the analysis is highly contextualised and shaped by long-term ethnographic work among these Influencers.

This chapter discusses the emerging practices of social media Influencers. In focus are six influential Instagram Influencers who were ‘exposed’ for involving themselves in campaigns aiming to discredit telecommunications providers in Singapore. In the absence of enforced legal boundaries and industry norms regarding advertising formats and advertising ethics, brand scandals are frequent, causing concern among regulators, brand managers, and platform owners. When starting to accommodate commercial brands and contents in social media posts, Influencers are constantly at risk of breaching their contract of trust with their followers. The case study shows how Influencers, followers, and eventually also the brand clients, are sensitive to what they experience as deceptive and unethical behaviours that will put normative pressures onto the Influencers to conform to certain ethical standards.

The new "liquid" media environment involves a range of new professions, practices and practitioners (Deuze 2011). Based on a rich ethnographic study containing personal interviews and participant observation, this paper looks at semi-professional Influencers in the social media marketing industry and asks how these new branding professions and their practices emerge and institutionalize. Specifically, the material draws on data collected between 2011 and 2015 among women Influencers in the ‘lifestyle’ genre in Singapore who advertise products and services in the industry verticals of Fashion, Beauty, and Electronic goods on blogs, Twitter, and Instagram.

Information technology has been suggested to improve patient health outcomes and reduce healthcare cost. This study explored the business model and effects of collaborative innovation between caregivers and patients on healthcare delivery through remote patient monitoring by interviewing caregivers and surveying atrial fibrillation patients. Findings indicate that remote monitoring enhanced early detection of potential risks and quality of clinical decision-making with patients feeling more empowered and involved in their own care. The remote monitoring system which consisted of a home-based ECG and a web-based service and was offered free to patients, brought together caregivers, patients, service provider and the government as actors. The introduction of remote monitoring increased the workload of caregivers and facilitation of timely diagnostics and decision-making were not realized. IT is an enabler of innovation in healthcare, but it must be integrated into work processes with a viable business model to realize potential benefits and sustain it.

This editorial reviews current research about media entrepreneurship and introduces the four papers published in this special issue. These papers move the emerging academic field of media entrepreneurship forward by outlining the relevance of context for enhancing our understanding of entrepreneurial phenomena, by introducing the theoretical concept of ‘entrepreneuring as emancipation’, by analyzing the institutionalization of media entrepreneurship education, and by categorizing different investment types in corporate entrepreneurship. The editorial concludes by calling for continuing efforts to theory-building to further develop the field.

Peer interaction and collaborative learning through the use of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) is used to an increasing extent in higher education. Universities attempt to motivate learners (students) to support their peers to enhance the quality of learning outcomes. This study monitors how an ICTSS (ICT-based Support System) facilitates peer interaction in the Bachelor’s and Master’s thesis process. The aim of the study was to investigate learners’ perception of usefulness of an ICTSS for peer interaction and the influencing factors on the quality of the peer interaction. The ICTSS was developed at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences (DSV), at Stockholm University. The system facilitates peer interaction in three ways: peer reviews, active participation, and final opposition. The study employed a mixed-method approach, which included an online survey followed by in-depth interviews. The target groups were learners at the Bachelor’s and Master’s level in computer science and information systems. The findings showed that learners perceived the peer interaction useful to enhance the quality of the thesis outcomes. However, there are influencing factors affecting the quality of peer interaction, in different phases of the thesis process. Examples of these factors are the quality of thesis manuscripts, supervisors’ control and grading of the process, clear instructions and guidelines, learners’ understanding of the peer interaction and why it takes place, previous training and learners’ motivation to perform peer reviews. Following these factors, the study developed a set of strategic suggestions from both pedagogical and technical aspects to enhance the peer interaction in the thesis process. Considering these suggestions makes the use of the ICTSS more effective to enhance the quality of thesis learning outcomes.

The purpose of the study was to explore the strategies and reasons for Swedish municipalities to migrate from proprietary office applications, such as Microsoft Office, to the use of the open source software OpenOffice. We performed a comparative case study of three Swedish municipalities in the region of Västra Götaland currently implementing or planning to implement OpenOffice; Alingsås, Falköping and Kungälv. The methods of data collection used in the study were semi-structured interviews with IT managers, such as IT strategists and Chief Information Officers (CIOs), in each municipality, and document analysis.

The findings of the study indicated that one of the municipalities had an IT strategy including strategies for use of open source software. The second municipality planned implementation of OpenOffice but were “between IT strategies”, as the current IT strategy hadn’t been updated for some years. The third municipality had abolished IT strategies, as the difficulties of anchoring strategies on all levels of the organisations were too large. Instead, operative guidelines concerning i.e. the use of open source software were used in IT management. The main driver of implementing OpenOffice was to lower IT costs. The IT managers were well aware of the fact that open source software is not entirely free of cost, but estimated the total cost of ownership of OpenOffice to be less than for Microsoft Office. Perceived barriers of implementation and use of OpenOffice were lack of standardisation with current administrative and enterprise systems used in the municipalities as well as a general lack of knowledge and familiarity with open source software among staff. There were also a genuine concern over the possibility of the community of OpenOffice developers leaving the program and its users to embark on new open source software project. The traditional relationship between systems suppliers and customers was perceived to disappear and be replaced with a much more uncertain business relationship. Further research in a larger number of Swedish municipalities is needed in order to increase the understanding of the circumstances of migration to open source software in municipalities.

The study is based on the pragmatic question whether one can apply the theoretical perspectives priming, experience space and relationship marketing in a practical context. The authors visualize how these concepts appear practical and what advantages and disadvantages can be discerned in the particular case of HV71. The method used is a hypothetico-deductive approach, which is not entirely conventional in the humanistic and social scientific context. Consequently, it has been proven to be particularly suitable as it could expose the theoretical perspectives for a difficult scientific test.

The result of the study demonstrated that a marketer could benefit from using the theoretical perspectives when exercising the profession. It also showed that the object of study applied these perspectives. Furthermore, the study contributes with new knowledge in two areas. First, it was shown that researchers could use the hypothetico-deductive method as tool for humanistic and social scientific studies such as this. Also, the study answered the fundamental questions whether the theoretical perspectives could be identified in practice and how the object of study benefited from applying them.

This paper reviews methods for evaluating and analyzing the understandability of classification models in the context of data mining. The motivation for this study is the fact that the majority of previous work has focused on increasing the accuracy of models, ignoring user-oriented properties such as comprehensibility and understandability. Approaches for analyzing the understandability of data mining models have been discussed on two different levels: one is regarding the type of the models’ presentation and the other is considering the structure of the models. In this study, we present a summary of existing assumptions regarding both approaches followed by an empirical work to examine the understandability from the user’s point of view through a survey. The results indicate that decision tree models are more understandable than rule-based models. Using the survey results regarding understandability of a number of models in conjunction with quantitative measurements of the complexity of the models, we are able to establish correlation between complexity and understandability of the models.

There are several computer based job classification systems for the labour domain and the purpose of which mainly is to enable search and to collect statistics. The systems typically encode information about the job, the workplace, the employer, the salary, necessary education and experience, duration, hours, need for a driving licence etc. But actual job advertisements, for example such that can be found in the Swedish Job Bank, a set of web pages containing information about job vacancies provided by AMS, the Swedish government agency for labour market activities, often contain requirements that are not included in these classification schemes; the applicant should enjoy working with people, be able to pick up new things quickly or be creative. In an effort to extend existing schemes we have developed a taxonomy of properties like these and a computer tool that can be used to analyse text based on the categories in the taxonomy. The tool can also be used to construct future taxonomies. In this work, we will present the taxonomy, the computer tool and some results based on using the tool. This paper has three purposes; the first is to present a taxonomy of personal properties of job applicants in job advertisements, the second is to present a tool that can be used both to develop such a taxonomy and to analyse text using the taxonomy, and the third is to describe some results of having used the tool and the taxonomy to analyse job advertisements.